An Unlikely Pair
by Dreamincolor
Summary: Fred & Lilah are forced to team up against Angelus and take an unexpected trip through dimensions. Set MidS4. An abundance of swearing, and eventual femslash.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: An Unlikely Pair  
**Author:** walkwithheros  
**Spoilers**: Up to Season 4, Episode 12 Calvary. **  
Rated:** PG13  
**Main Characters:** Fred, Lilah  
**Other:** Angelus  
**Reviews/Critiques:** Make my day. :)

**Disclaimer**: In the big picture, not mine.

**Chapter One**

* * *

Angelus had walked right out the front door, without even blinking.

Moments ago they had let him loose on the world, not knowing that the spell they had cast had gone wrong, not knowing that Angel's soul, wherever it was, was not in his bloodthirsty body.

Fred watched them rush out the door after him, Wesley, Gunn, Cordelia and Connor, not knowing if they were going to come back in little tiny pieces. The hero part of her, a part recently cultivated into existence at Angel Investigations, wanted to go with them. She wanted to help.

But Lilah was bleeding through her shirt again, and needed bandaging badly. Wesley had told - not asked, because there was that desperate strain to his voice - told Fred to stay behind and look after her. Fred was the one with a science background, she was the closest thing to a doctor they had. The sunless streets outside were in a state of anarchy, the lower legions of the city making themselves known, and risking the journey to the hospital was completely out of the question.

So leaving Lorne, who had volunteered to hold down the fort on the account of having no fighting skills what-so-ever, to anxiously fix himself the third seabreeze of the day, Fred tramped off into the back office to dig out their extensive supply of first-aid materials.

The door swung shut behind her and she fumbled through the cupboard on autopilot. She should be out there with them. It wasn't as if the bitch-queen-of-lawyerville was going to bleed her guts out all at once, but Charles, Wesley, Cordy and Connor, their guts were the ones in real danger. They were chasing Angelus.

_Click._

The office door swung open, and Fred, bent over with her head inside the cupboard and her ass in the air, craned her neck to see behind her. "What is it Lor-"

Across the room Lilah hovered silently near the door, pale lips arched downward in a frown. She held one hand across her stomach, palm pressed over the freshly moistened blood-stain.

"Oh." Suddenly feeling keenly self-conscious, Fred turned back to the cupboard only long enough to pull out what she needed and quickly straighten up.

The discomfort in the air was tangible, at least on her half of the room. As she gestured to the chair beside her she forced her eyes onto the first aid kit in front of her face, reading labels on bottles she already knew by heart.

Wesley and Lilah. Together. Together in the down and dirty, bend her over the kitchen-counter sense. Or is that what Angelus said Wesley was going to do to Fred? She couldn't remember.

Angelus' words were fresh in her mind; they rubbed raw at her insides and grated at her, grated away at the Wesley she knew. The Wesley she thought she knew.

"If you're going to play doctor, you might as well have me where you can reach." Brushing a few papers aside, Lilah lifted herself gingerly onto the desk, long legs crossing gracefully. Even with a hole in her gut, Office Bitch had more poise than Fred ever had. More poise, and more authority.

Wetting down a few cotton balls with chemicals she knew were going to sting, she stole a quick glance and found Lilah staring wordlessly out the office window towards the front door, the door Wesley had walked through minutes ago.

Fred cleared her throat. "Your, er, shirt."

Lilah grunted, lifting her shirt clear over her head to offer access to her bleeding stomach. Fred's eyes caught on a black bra and, she couldn't help but notice, a rather impressive bust, accented by a tasteful hint of lace. With an awkward swiftness, her eyes shied away.

Of course, Fred thought uneasily as she leaned in towards the woman perched in font of her, she could have just lifted it over her stomach; she didn't have to take it all the way off... What kind of a moron wore a lacy bra to the office anyway?

The evil kind, naturally. Evil, vain, busty, beautifully shaped Lilah. Fred hated her for all that, and more.

Pressing a moist cotton ball to the edge of the bloody wound gingerly; Fred felt the skin beneath shudder. The red wound fizzed a sickly white as she pressed the chemicals to its edges, dabbing and tidying up crusted blood marks; tossing stained cotton ball after stained cotton ball into the trash bin.

The body before her flinched, skin crawling at the more direct touches, and once or twice she thought she glanced Lilah's face caught in a grimace.

She couldn't stitch it; the wound was shaped all wrong for that. The best she could do was wrap it up and prevent it from bleeding. "It'll need to be changed…daily." Gently pressing the protective bandaging to the marred skin, she stole another look at Lilah's pained expression. It was the first time Fred had seen her without make up, and her eyes looked oddly lighter, void of their usual mascara and eye shadow. They looked lighter, and much more human; though it might have been the look of affliction that humanized them. "If we had antibiotics, there'd be less chance of infection-"

"And if I had painkillers, I'd sleep like a baby." Lilah's lips twitched upward in a shadow of a smirk as Fred circled the gauze around her stomach, the smaller woman leaning with visible discomfort between the lawyer's thighs. "If wishes were horses."

_Crash!_

Both women froze. A series of thuds followed the original sound, fading out with each repetition. There was a moment of silence, and Fred's breath caught.

Lorne.

Pausing only to snatch the pistol from the table, Fred was out the office door before Lilah could bat an eye.

Fred skidded around the corner outside the office and no sooner had she instinctively reached for the dagger on the counter then an iron grip from behind caught her by the wrist, jerking her body back into a solid chest; Angelus' chest.

"Fred." He purred her name like a favorite pet, pressing her front to him with one hand on the small of her back, the other squeezing her wrist till her hand fell limp and the pistol clattered to the floor.

"Miss me, kitten?" His hand ran smoothly up her arm to trace lightly over her throat, leaning close till his breath hit her ear. Long after his words left the air she felt his voice reverberating through her body like a ripple. That, or she'd begun to shake.

Over his shoulder she caught sight of Lorne's motionless frame, crumpled at the bottom of the staircase. Angelus' hand muffled her gasp. "Tisk tisk, it's not fair to peek." Bringing her face in front of his so their noses were almost touching, he forcefully pressed her still tighter against him, his palm sliding up and down her back in a stroking motion that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. "Now, now little one, he's only resting." A cold finger trailed down the crook of her neck to her breastbone; tracing little shapes over the place she knew he felt her frantically pumping heart. "He'll get his turn later."

Then out of the corner of her eye, Fred glimpsed Lilah creeping up soundlessly behind Angelus, reaching out for the dagger on the counter. Lilah…to the rescue?

Hardly. There was no other way out of the office.

Still an ally was an ally, and in an immediate and rash attempt to provide a distraction Fred pressed her lips to Angelus'. They were cold and motionless, and on them she tasted the very essence of death. He had been feeding.

She felt curiosity relax his grip on her as her lips worked furiously against his, her hands slithering up his chest. Her eyes closed tightly as she quickly stifled the urge to be sick. Pain, blood and death; they were all on his lips and she was taking them in.

Then leisurely, he pulled away. Smirking he held her straining face at bay with a hand against her collarbone, eyebrows raised in mock astonishment. "Fred! Now Fred, if Angel had only known that you wanted him that badly, he might have-" His cold eyes danced over her body critically, "No..no, actually he wouldn't."

And dagger in hand, Lilah made a dash towards Angelus' back.

She wasn't fast enough. Sidestepping gracefully he knocked the blade out of Lilah's hand, and with what looked like a gentle nudge sent her tumbling into Fred. The two women toppled to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Lilah swore brutally under her breath, clutching at her stomach as Fred wriggled out from underneath her. "Lilah.." Wagging a finger lazily at her, Angelus clicked his tongue, reaching down to grab the lawyer's slender ankle. "Not. Nice." With one smooth motion he lifted her lower body into the air by her leg, fingers digging into her calf roughly. Lilah's body bent into an awkward L-shape, head and shoulders crumpled against the tile, face contorted in an expression of pain as he held her up like a rag doll.

Fred darted towards the dropped pistol, but Angelus's foot caught her forcefully in the side and sent her light body skidding along the floor.

"What _is_ it with you women?!" Fred's eyes flickered open long enough to see Lilah's body hurdling toward her again, and with a preface of mild collision pain they found themselves for the second time a jumble of wrongly bent limbs. "Didn't your men ever teach you," Angelus scooped up the discarded pistol, pointing it leisurely in their direction as he fired a loud warning shot that punctured the wall directly over them, "To lie still?"

Neither of them moved. Fred lay half on her back, half on her side, with the lawyer's upper body facedown on top of her. Lilah's legs spread out gracelessly behind her, one arm looped over Fred's stomach and face held rigidly over the thinner woman's chest. Lilah's breath hit the crook of Fred's neck in quick, unsteady bursts, and there was no mistaking that Lilah Morgan was shaking; though whether it was from fear or pain was still up for debate.

"Now then, Fred," He said her name like a scolding, and over Lilah's head Fred could see one hand reaching into his jacket pocket, "I brought you a present. I was going to give it to you later, after a bit of violence and inappropriate touching, but.." He smiled casually, as casually as if they had been discussing what was for dinner, "I figure Lilah's a more qualified whore anyway." His hand reappeared, this time brandishing a book. "That, and I'm impatient."

The book was brown with a ridged binding, its corner was bent on the left side, and a stamp marked it as property of the university library. Even without her glasses, which lay forgotten on the office table, she recognized it. And if she didn't know better, she might have thought her heart had stopped.

All at once Fred was writhing in a crazed attempt to free herself, dead to reason as blinding fear seared her. She had to get out, had to get away. She couldn't go back. Seven years ago, that book had sent her to Pylea.

But Lilah was not budging. The lawyer's face contorted in pain as a particularly zealous flail caught her in the gut, manicured hands finding Fred's quickly and pinning them to the tile. In the background, Angelus was laughing.

"Don't be a _moron_," Lilah growled into Fred's ear, pressing her weight down firmly on top of the smaller woman, "You run, he'll shoot you."

Fred's initial thought was that getting shot would be the favorable option, but that was assuming the shot resulted in death. Knowing Angelus, he would not shoot to kill; people were not nearly as much fun dead. It was far more likely that he would send her to Pylea wounded, vulnerable. Fred's struggle faded, and died.

And somewhere between suppressing her panic and trying, unsuccessfully, to think up the world's fastest escape plan, she forgot to wonder why Lilah had stopped her.

"And its times like these I wish I had a camera." Angelus held up his hands as if he were taking a picture, stepping casually to the right as if to get a better angle. "I would call it, 'Girl Romp, a Wesley's Paradise.'" He smiled appreciatively at his own joke, fangs glinting in the light. "Well ladies, I've got places to go and people to torture. Let's get this show on the road, break it up."

Scowling, presumably at either the innuendo or the discomfort motion caused, Lilah rolled onto her side and off of Fred. "Angelus, surely we can-"

"What, negotiate? Lilah, don't make me laugh." One hand still aiming the gun idly, he began to flip through the book, licking his fingers periodically. "You've no job and no connections. All you've got to offer me now is that battered body of yours, and since I'm going to take it anyway…" His eyes flashed up to move over her hungrily, and Fred felt the foreign pang of Lilah-bound sympathy as against her, she felt the lawyer shiver.

"As for you, Fred." Instinctively she twitched at the sound of her name, and in response Angelus fired another warning shot into the wall behind her, his eyes wandering back to the page. "Well, some nightmares just can't be improved upon."

Any second now Fred was sure that they - Wes, Gunn, Cordelia and Connor - would all come crashing in to save them in just the nick of time. They would save the day, just like they always did.

But the seconds ticked past, and no one came.

And suddenly Angelus was crossing the room, book and gun in hand, and gripping a clump of Fred's hair as he dragged her to her feet. The cold barrel of the pistol pressed against her throat as he read the magic words.

The space in front of them swirled brightly in a blur of light and color as the portal opened. Fred whimpered, clenched hands trembling against her thighs as her shaking became almost violent.

"Pleasure knowing you," his cold lips brushed a kiss onto her forehead, and smiling brutally, he shoved her forward. "Cow-bitch."

And as Fred fell into the portal, she heard behind her an exclamation of pain. Seconds later she felt something warm bump against her back. She strained to see as her body was flung through dimensions, and realized with a half believing stare that Lilah had fallen too.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

* * *

Lilah Morgan hit the ground in an ungainly sprawl, the usual strain of favored curse words leaving her in a painful moan.

The sun, or suns upon closer examination, were uncomfortably bright, so she curled an arm over her eyes, the other hand pressed tightly to her bandaged middle. Peering out from under her wrist she looked over to find Fred with her brown eyes fixed blankly on the sky, the lithe physicist rigid against the dirt.

And if it hadn't been for the years of desensitization and her undeniable hate of the bitch, Lilah might have felt sorry for her.

They were surrounded by trees and other vegetation, but it bore little resemblance to anything they might find in LA, or even in the US. The plants were brighter, more colorful and much stranger.

Pylea.

She'd read about it of course, in the Texan's file. Ruled by green demons, humans made slaves, the list of negatives went on. The only pleasant thing about the place that she could recall was that Wolfram and Hart had a standing there, a standing she may or may not be able to exploit.

For a long time both women lay in silence. Lilah half expected Fred to cry, or scream, or babble frantically like her file said she had when she was crazy, but she did nothing. She just stared silently at the overly-bright sky, and Lilah followed suite.

They were so incredibly fucked, but at least this fucked was figurative.

An eerie howl echoed in the distance and both women bolted into a sitting position. The motion's aftermath caused Lilah to double over slightly with a hand to her stomach, voice breaking the silence sharply, "What the-"

"Hellhounds." Fred spoke into her knees, wide eyes on the dirt.

"What?" Fuck.

"They're wild down here, I-I think." Rising to her feet, the Texan answered again without eye contact, voice faltering softly. She didn't bother to brush herself off at she stared out at nothing, face contorted into an expression Lilah was more than familiar with. It was one she'd made a career out of causing, it was pain.

"What do you mean, you _think_? You were here for _five years_." She struggled to her feet as gracefully as her recently agitated injury would permit, eyes narrowed furiously at the brunette's incompetence. The little school girl could fall apart later, when they were out of the open.

"Tiscanus, it only grows in the southern kingdom." A thin hand gestured listlessly at the patches of purple grass shooting up around them, "I was in the north."

"Fuck." And damn, and cunt, and bitch, and all the other words that once made her office-lackeys cower. Lilah glared venomously at the inside of her eyelids, eyes pressed shut as she gingerly straightened her damaged torso out.

The twig had never been to this side of Pylea - there went half of her usefulness. The remaining fifty percent was divided between her ability to get them back to LA, and her intrinsic value as meat. Though of course four-eyes was so slight, Lilah supposed killing her for food would really be a waste of effort. Not like she'd know how to cook it anyway.

Frowning, she delivered several casually place insults, none of which were reciprocated, and without further conversation the two of them tramped up the side of the mountain that the forest seemed to be scaling. Neither of them spoke, but the smaller woman took the lead, staring trance-like up the oversized hill. Once the Texan was in front of her, Lilah allowed herself to hunch over with discomfort, palm pressed tightly to her stomach as she followed Fred's pert little ass up the slope.

Why in god's name, whichever god because in her experience it really didn't matter, did it have to be her. The poster child for wholesome Texas living, a core member of the good-and-plenties, the very thorn in her metaphorical side. The women who wore those rimmed little glasses, the woman she'd worn glasses to mock. The glasses that Wesley told her to leave on.

That bitch.

Anyone else would have been more bearable, even Cordelia's incessant babble would have been preferable.

Then again, as with most subjects, Cordelia didn't know squat about Pylea. Wrong kingdom or not, Fred still knew more than her, and there in lay her value. That, and her characteristically exploitable goodness. She'd already shown an unwillingness to let Lilah bleed herself to death, and it was doubtful that Pylea would completely abolish that. Allies were allies, period.

Even if she did want to bash their dainty skulls in.

They walked, and walked, and walked some more. Up the mountain and along it's curving sides of stone. They walked until Lilah was ready to demand a rest, which was saying something since she had no interest in meeting a hellhound; when she looked up suddenly to find that the other woman was no where to be seen.

So much for Fred's exploitable goodness. She had been right in front of her ten seconds ago, if that twig left her to fend for herself-

"Here." The small voice echoed out from somewhere to her right, and pressing a steadying hand to the cool rock wall, Lilah eased her fingers along the mountainside until they fumbled into the opening the voice had echoed from. It was a thin slit in the stone that tucked back into itself, but was wide enough for her to slide through, into the darkness of a small cave.

Light poured in through a break in the ceiling, illuminating only patches of the smooth floor. The air was stuffy and stale, but not moist. The cave was dry, and felt a few degrees warmer than it did outside. Pressing her back against the nearest wall, Lilah crumpled to the floor, sparing only a brief glance of approval for the Texan, who wasn't looking anyway.

Her bony little frame was traipsing around the cave, looking into dark corners for who knows what, and Lilah didn't ask.

* * *

The sun dropped, and so did the temperature. Drastically.

It was fortunate that after Fred had bolted off towards Angelus' racket Lilah had taken the liberty of helping herself to a long sleeved shirt she found folded over the chair in the hotel office. She had no intention of putting her bloodstained rag on again, even if it was once a two-hundred dollar, designer bloodstained rag, and she could only assume it still sat on the desk where she left it. In the darkness of the cave she scrutinized her new, suitably warmer attire for the first time and concluded that it must have been Cordelia's, because her bust didn't strain the fabric.

Lilah sat with her back against the stone wall, placed strategically on the wall that had been warmed by the sun hours ago, knees tucked in close to her chest. The cold was uncomfortable enough to keep her awake, but not unbearable.

She couldn't say the same for her fellow though; who crouched against the opposite, presumable colder wall, scratching away at the stone with what Lilah could only assume was a sharp rock. Her efforts made a soft tapping, scraping noise, and left a combination of letters and numbers trailing over a good half of the cave's wall.

Lilah had watched for the first several hours, but with time the spectacle lost its appeal, and she took interest in the splinters that had pierced the soft, pampered soles of her feet. Like her original shirt, she had abandoned her heels in the office.

Stealth and heels rarely went together. Still now she wished, as unpractical as they could be, that she had them. The oddly colored shrubbery of Pylea was not all cushy leaves and purple grass, she'd spent much of their trek up the mountain dodging fallen thorns.

Once she'd pulled the prime barbs from the flushing, baby soft skin of her feet, she turned her attention to the dark spots forming on her leg. Five little finger bruises of the darkest shade of blue, bordering on black, decorated her calf where Angelus had gripped; gripped her leg, and threw her around like a rag doll.

She was going to dream about that. She was going to relive that moment over and over again.

Null and void. Destruction of the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart, courtesy of the Beast, resulted in every single contract in Lilah Morgan's name and any other becoming null and void. This included, among more important documents, the contract relieving her of her dreams.

It had been a popular company policy, the removal of dreams. People in her line of work rarely had favorable contact with their subconscious, for obvious reasons.

She knew the circles under her eyes were apparent. Where she'd been hiding out in the sewers there was the lack of safe food and clean water, but human beings perish fastest without sleep; and she was falling apart.

Every inch of her ached for reprieve, but now was not the time. The last thing she needed was Fred watching her shriek and writhe in her sleep.

"Why are you here?" The Texan's quiet voice shattered the silence. Lilah's gaze moved over her tentatively, and found Fred's arm reaching motionlessly to the top line of numbers in front of her, stretching out her torso so that her shirt exposed several inches of angular, sharply shaped hip-bone. Fred was staring at the numbers in front of her, and did not turn.

"Because as much as I dislike you," Lilah's lip twitched upward subtly as she mused on the extreme nature of that understatement, "You're still better than whatever's out there."

"The portal-" The brunette's hand twitched slightly, a motion exemplified by the stone between her fingers, "did he push you through?"

Lilah frowned at the girl's back. "Fell." It was doubtful, as ironic and, surely in his eyes, humorous of a situation her presence had caused, that Angelus would give up the chance to torture and kill her at his leisure.

"Were you trying to run?" The thin form in font of her still hadn't moved, her body stretched out into an even thinner silhouette in the dark cave.

Lilah eyed the back of the girl's tangled brown tresses with a lightly furrowed brow, before shrugging. "Trying to take the gun." It had seemed like a good idea, at the time. In the very least a weapon might've provoked him to kill her faster.

"Hm." Fred made an obscure grunting noise in reply.

And the hours ticked away, with Lilah staring at the floor and Fred scratching away at the walls.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

There were forty-three variables in Fred's original equation. The original equation was one that she'd developed in Pylea and used years ago in an attempt to open up a portal home, but instead opened up portals all over Pylea. It was the same type of portal that accidentally sucked in Cordelia, and in consequence brought Angel, Wesley, Charles and Lorne.

And in the end, brought her home.

Remembering the equation was easy, she'd spent five years developing it, but she'd only seen the variables once. Out of the priest's book, only long enough to substitute and solve. Only long enough to summon the portal and get out.

Because without the variables, she couldn't control where the portal would open, and if she couldn't control that then she had a better chance of being struck by lightning than getting out of here.

Which, in Pylea, was actually fairly likely. Clouds were lower in the atmosphere.

She could remember twelve. They were the most memorable of the variables, symmetrical numbers, like 22, 55, 66, numbers that added into themselves 224, 145, 325, or the one that looked like pi, 314.

It was cold, Fred knew because her fingers were going numb and making it harder to write - not that scratching numbers into rock was could really be called writing. The corner of her thumb had split open on one of the sharper edges, and she found herself longing for the smooth writing of ball point pens, but Pylea didn't have those.

No pens, no showers, no beds, no soft words, no kissing, no holding, no warmth. No one.

Except Lilah. Lilah was a variable. She was the difference between then and now; and how she would affect the equation, anyone's guess was as good as Fred's.

She was out of room again. Her arm wouldn't stretch any higher, and she'd boxed herself into a corner where numbers and letters had begun to overlap. Overlap, and blur.

Fred rocked off her toes and onto the flats of her feet, straining her eyes to read what she'd written. Things like handwriting got worse in Pylea, because they lost importance. Handwriting, and grammar and knowing the difference between thinking and speaking, they all became unimportant.

Her stomach growled, and hunger nipped persistently at her insides.

The first streaks of morning light began to leak through the ceiling and illuminated her night's work. If she'd been in her nice, warm bed Charles would have picked her up by now. If it was an early day they might've already been on their way to the waffle house, her waffle house. Hot waffles and sweet syrup and the smell of his cologne. Those were the things that came with dawn, not the false darkness of caves.

Charles. He would look for her. He would argue with Wesley and they would fight, fight over how and where to look. 'Locating spell,' Wes would say, and then Charles would knit his eyebrows together in that way that he does when it's hopeless. 'Waste of time,' Charles would snap, and accuse Wes of a number of things, because that's what fear drew out of him. Then Wesley would glare over his glasses, over the text he'd been skimming, to remind Charles that he hadn't lost just one person, Wesley had lost two. Then Charles would tell him that he loved Fred, and that was more than Wes could say for his lover. Then one of them would swing, and noses would bleed and lips would swell, and they would get spit and blood all over the tile.

But all in vain, because Angelus would not tell them where she was. They would be left to wonder and search; if Angelus hadn't killed them already.

Fred's stomach growled.

Rotating herself around, she found Lilah, back against the cave wall, with her knees tucked beneath her chin, hair coaxed by Pylea's humidity into messy curls against her cheeks. The lawyer's gaze was on the floor, starring into another world.

The stone fell loosely from Fred's hand, and clattered to the floor.

Grey-blue eyes flashed up to meet hers, and Lilah's pale lips pressed together with a shadow of thought, contorting their full, bow shape into a much thinner form. The morning rays that crept in through the cave's cracks illuminated her face in a way that made it look surprisingly angular and gaunt, but as ever, unsettlingly beautiful.

"Anything?" The lawyer's eyes bore into hers with a new intensity, with a sense of need Fred had never seen in the woman's face, not even when she was bleeding her guts out on the office desk, waiting to be bandaged. Lilah needed her, needed her to find them a way out.

"No." The word dropped from Fred's lips heavily, and a curtain of tangled brown hair fell over her cheeks as she lowered her eyes to the floor. She couldn't save herself the first time, what made Lilah think she could save them now? She could almost feel Lilah's eyes narrowing in disgust as she hissed a trail of muttered, but vicious insults. Lilah knew better. She knew Fred was useless. Stupid. Crazy.

And even still, she could feel Lilah's eyes on her, expecting. Needing. A woman like Lilah was used to seeing results, all she needed was the right set of threats. Threats, and she could have her way. But not in Pylea, everything changed in Pylea.

Fred stared into the stone floor, and her stomach growled. No longer just nipping, the hunger bit with sharp, striking pains at her core, and mixed oddly with a growing sense of nausea. In the end, the hunger won out. It always did.

Coarse grain and thistles still grew there, she had seen them on the trek up the mountain. With them she could make 'oatmeal,' which went well with kalla berries. Five years practice made her mock-oatmeal dish almost tasty. Tasty, if you were a starving cow.

But cow was one step above corpse.

Moving across the cave she began to press herself through the crevice, to the dangerous - but inevitable - outside, when Lilah's sharp voice stopped her, "Where do you think you're going?"

Fred's gaze flashed up only long enough to take in the look of fury that contorted the lawyer's, answering in a thin voice, "To find food."

"You'll be back." It wasn't a question.

Fred nodded. She nodded, but turned away and did not meet the eyes she felt on her back as she left. She did not meet them because she knew by the malice in the lawyer's voice that there was fear in them. Lilah, needing her. Lilah Morgan, Evil Bitch Extraordinaire, at her mercy.

Something inside her shuddered with pleasure at the ironic, unbelievable nature of that statement.

* * *

The suns hurt her eyes, and instinctively Fred shrunk away from them into the shadow of the mountain. She moved quickly and silently, eyes flashing around her like a scared, wild animal; a persona that came back to Fred with disgusting ease.

Where was the girl that fought beside heroes? Apparently, she hadn't made it through the dimensional shift.

Fred didn't have to wander far before she found a patch of thistles, and she could crouch down to scoop them up, still within view of their slit in the mountainside. The plants piled up in her arms, and when she was convinced she had enough for two, she piled kalla berries on top. They were the same blood red that she remembered, and taking one in her mouth she was surprised at how bitter they were, so much more so than she remembered; bitter, sour, and at the end, with the right amount of imagination, the tiniest bit sweet.

Looking at the brown, prickly plants in her arms, she wondered if Lilah would even bother eating them. For Fred's first few days in Pylea's wilderness, Fred hadn't even cared enough to try. She would rather daydream about real food than eat what the scavengers had left. She had lived off of dreams and thoughts until her stomach tore sense into her, dragging her, kicking and screaming, back into reality.

But maybe this time she didn't have to come back to reality. If she could just close her eyes, curl up and just sit, she could push it all out. She could think of pancakes and warm touches and forget all the things - the lonely, dehumanizing things - that came with Pylea. Because she could not do this. She could not survive hell. She. Could. Not.

Not again.

But if she closed her eyes, then Lilah would sit up in that cave, the bandaging on her wound getting dirty and her stomach growling and her knees pulled against her. Waiting for Fred to come back, waiting for Fred to take care of her, waiting.

Because Lilah couldn't take care of herself, not here. Not without knowing what to eat and where to hide and how to clean out the gash in her side, and for some reason, that made all the difference in the world.

Fred's feet seemed to move under her without her full consent, carrying her in a daze back up the mountain's side.

Then, some place not far in the distance, she heard a scream. A high, squealing sort of shriek - the desperate cry of prey, and all at once, Fred was running.

Running and looking back. She needed to know that she hadn't been seen, hadn't been spotted. She needed to know that she could dart back into the cave, safely, and wait. Hide.

She let out a scream of surprise as a jerking motion moved from her feet up through her body, and the world was pulled out from underneath her. There was a painful pressure in her ankle, cutting off the circulation in her right foot as she dangled from it, up-side down, with her hair brushing against the dirt. Her upper body strained to see what was holding her, and clutching at the captured leg she pulled her head high enough to see the rope that had looped around her right ankle.

It was a trap, a hunter's trap.

Her heart pumped terror through her chest so loud she could hear it as she frantically contorted her dangling body in an attempt to reach her captured ankle, but all she could do was tug at it uselessly with shaking fingers.

She needed to get loose, to get free. She had screamed and they would have heard her, whoever set this trap. Pylean hunters did not stray far from basic snares like this one, because most of their prey was more than capable of clawing their way loose. Traps like these were only meant to present an easier target.

"LILAH!" She screamed the other woman's name at the top of her lungs, voice cracking in panic as her hands continued to claw desperately at the rope. When she next looked up Lilah's form had appeared on the mountainside and was limping down towards her at a dangerous speed, clutching her side and stumbling in what Fred would later remember as one of Lilah's rare displays of graceless panic.

In a matter of seconds the other woman was at her side, the tips of manicured fingers straining desperately against the rope as Fred gripped the lawyer's thigh to stop her body from swinging like a pendulum.

Then the hands at her ankle and leg against her cheek were gone and Lilah was beneath her groping around in the dirt for something - anything - sharp. Fred's heart leapt as, gripping a rough stone, Lilah was back against her, Fred again holding tight to the lawyer's lower-body for support.

The stone Lilah was using to rub away at the rope must have been nicking into Fred's ankle because little flickers of pain traveled through her leg, provoking her face into a grimace against the surface of the lawyer's thigh.

And then there was a low, brief whistling noise, and almost simultaneously Lilah let out a gasp. Stumbling back in surprise, the other woman's body moved away from Fred's as Lilah gripped her own shoulder, near the place that a small red dart was protruding from her arm.

There was the whistling again, and Fred felt a sharp pain in the side of her neck. Her hand found something small, the tip embedded in her skin.

She saw Lilah slump to the ground in front of her, and slowly Fred's own arms fell away from her throat to hang limp and brush the ground. Darkness pressed in on the sides of her vision, and steadily the world went black.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

The first thought that crept into Lilah's consciousness was the realization that her skin felt flushed and sticky with sweat; the second was that her wrists and ankles hurt. They ached with a faint throbbing in her fingertips, and less distinctly, in her feet.

She opened her eyes to find Pylea's two suns high up in the sky - a good few hours beyond where she remembered them being - and her body propped up against something hard, wrists and ankles bound together, in the middle of what looked like a market place.

The knot of cloth wedged into her mouth muffled a series of shrill, startled noises, and suffocated her suddenly panicked breathing.

Over the general bustle of the market square at midday, one low, male voice from just behind her peripheral vision rung out, close and loud, but its words were lost on her. The language it spoke was nothing close to English.

To her far right she could see a kind of table propped up, hunks of all different colored meats dangling on display along with several animals that hadn't been butchered or skinned and were hanging stiffly, swaying with the hot, dry wind.

Her arms were twisted back uncomfortably behind her, chest arching out awkwardly. She strained her head to see that her arms were tied around a heavy wooden pole, and peeking out from the other side of that pole was a familiar set of slender shoulders - the other woman's arms bound similarly to a twin pole on the other side. One of Lilah's hands groped blindly behind her, fingertips brushing over short, unpolished nails and thin hands.

She wrapped her fingers around Fred's and squeezed.

The hand squeezed back quickly, and a muffled squeak of recognition came from the other side of the pole. Texas made no motion for their hands to part, and neither did she.

Pyleans bustled past, clutching strange chicken look-a-likes and baskets full of odd groceries. Several left her line of sight to speak with the male voice behind her - whose shouts she was beginning to recognize as a sales pitch - and then strode back past carrying messy hunks of animal under their arms.

But no one spared them more than a glance - tied to a pole on the side of the market square. Gradually her breathing slowed, Fred's fingers intertwined firmly with her own.

She remembered seeing the Twig dangling by her ankles, voice cracking as she screamed Lilah's name in a desperate pitch. Then she remembered running. She remembered stumbling and franticly tugging at the other woman's bindings. Lilah remembered panic, and then she remembered nothing.

Hot sunlight pressed down on her with an oppressive intensity. She could feel beads of sweat rolling down her face to drip off of her chin into the dirt, leaving tiny wet spots that dried up almost instantly in the heat. On top of being a prisoner in a hell-dimension, that dimension would have to have atrocious weather - the kind that turned people into ice-cubes at night, and puddles in the daytime.

Angelus – the designer of this little holiday - was steadily making his way to the top of her hit-list.

A particularly vicious burst of wind picked up, and blew a bout of dirt into her eyes.

And she was already thinking of torture methods - peeling off his skin, burning him alive, slowly cutting him up piece by piece; all company favorites. Of course now, she had no company to perform said methods, but she was a capable woman, she'd figure something out.

Even with her eyes pressed tight shut, for several minutes the dirt beat like sandpaper over her unprotected face, and she could feel moisture slipping out from the corners of her closed eyes, trying to force out the dust. The world swam before her in a painful blur of browns and greens, all dirt and Pyleans - muck and green bastards that hunched over their goods and covered their faces, kicking more dust up as they walked.

One such Pylean - a short, fat woman with beady eyes – was suddenly much closer to Lilah than she would have liked, shoes carelessly kicking up extra dirt into her face as the woman circled the poles they were tied to; leaning down first to examine Fred, then moving to scrutinize her.

The woman's thin eyes narrowed further as she squinted at her, leaning in close enough that Lilah had to hold her breath not to take in the woman's foul smell. The woman spat words into her face, and several seconds later a Pylean man, twice her size, appeared finally from the other side of the pole, speaking in the same voice that had been ringing out from behind her since she'd woken.

Towering over the Pylean woman, he looked from her to Lilah, and back again anxiously, and at the woman's gesture grabbed Lilah roughly by the chin and tilted her head from side to side. Then with filthy hands forced her mouth open - showing the woman her teeth.

His dirty, invasive fingers in her mouth triggered a gag-reflex that she scarcely stifled.

When he finally released her, Lilah did her best not to choke on the wad of cloth his fingers had stuffed further back in her mouth, choking instead on a series of flustered, half-muffled coughs. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the woman produce what seemed to be a purse, gathering a series of coins in her hand and beginning to hold them out to the man before taking one more, tentative look at Lilah.

Then suddenly the woman was reaching down and jerking up the base of her shirt, revealing her wounded middle.

Her gag muffled a yelp as the woman viciously raked her fingers over her stomach wound, screaming all the while at the butcher, before moving to point her now bloodied fingers menacingly in the man's face.

But their argument fell on deaf ears as Lilah realized with a second look at her bare, blood-crusted stomach, that every last thread of bandaging had been removed. While they were unconscious, they had been examined.

Her body lurched forward with another thick wave of nausea that she barely suppressed.

Fred's hands were in hers, small and bony, but holding on with a necessity that under any other circumstances, would have struck Lilah as funny. Under any other circumstances.

The Pyleans screamed at one another viciously for several minutes, green faces turning greener, before the woman finally plopped several coins into the man's hand; seemingly less than she had held out before.

Then the man was gone, leaving the woman to tap her foot impatiently till he returned, carrying what looked like two thick, metal rings.

And the fear that the Texan's suddenly shaking hands conveyed was not lost on her. Lilah had done her homework - she knew what those collars were for. They electrocuted human slaves into submission, or simply blew their heads off.

The green bastard was in her face again, his hand taking a rough fist of her hair and yanking, stretching her throat out to the side. She writhed in place, jerking away from him and cursing the gag that prevented her from biting. She was punished with a swing from the man's basketball-sized fist that hit hard in the jaw, and slammed the back of her head with a thud into the pole.

There was a click as the heavy, metal collar clamped around her neck – the silver band fastening itself shut with an electronic beep.

Then the hand in her hair was gone and a yelping noise, as if from pain, came from behind her. Fred's nails dug into the lawyer's palms as the same electronic beep sounded a second time. All the while Lilah's head pounded, closed eyes still stinging from the dust.

Then the huge, calloused hands were on her again, prying her hands out of Fred's. Her eyes flashed open in time to see her own arms - suddenly free from their bindings - drop to her sides as the Pylean moved cut her ankles loose.

And the man was gone. The portly woman stared down at her tentatively in his absence, and for the first time in a long time, Lilah didn't bother trying negotiation. The woman barked what sounded like an order.

Lilah's now free hands worked to pry the knot of cloth from inside her mouth, which she spit out in a hacking cough, swallowing with relief as she took in several long breaths.

Her cheek stung where the butcher had hit her, and she longed passionately for her cell phone, where the first number on her speed-dial connected her to Wolfram and Hart's assassination squad. Though, on second thought, what she really wanted was the second number on her speed-dial - the torture committee. Death was too quick, what the butcher and the wench really deserved was to spend eternity screaming.

Her gaze shifted to find that the Texan was standing upright beside her, shaking violently with her fists clenched rigidly at her side, and eyes wide with a dreamy kind of horror - the kind that combines past and present terrors.

The Pylean barked the same order again, lip curling with malice as she produced what looked like a remote, finger hovering over one of the buttons as she pointed it at Lilah's collar.

She took the hint. With some level of effort. and one hand on the pole for support, Lilah pulled herself to her feet; spluttering vicious curses all the while.

Her head throbbed and her eyes burned, and she wanted nothing more than to bludgeon the butcher and the green wench to death. Karmically, she really didn't think that wasn't too much to ask.

Lilah had no sooner hunched over, free arm clutching her stomach, than thin arms were around her. One of Fred's hands curled around her waist, the other moving Lilah's hand off of the pole and over a small set of shoulders.

Lilah tried to speak, but the air passed through her lips soundlessly. Big, brown eyes looked back at her. They were wet with tears, but the Texan's jaw was set.

It was the first time that she'd seen Fred face to face since she'd come to - and she saw now that half of it was decorated with cuts and scratches. The hunter had probably just cut her out of the tree, and let her fall on her face. Funny image - under any other circumstances.

The silver band around Fred's neck glinted in the sunlight and she felt the weight of her own, heavy around her throat. Slaves. Lilah Morgan, a fucking slave. Her hand twitched as the desire for her speed-dial came back in full force.

Instead, at the demon woman's impatient gesture, she made her way across the marketplace with Texas under her arm, the two of them trailing after the wench. The sun skewed the Pylean's stumpy shadow along the ground beside her; and in its wake Lilah found that her shadow and Fred's had morphed into one.

* * *

The wench slammed the barn door shut behind them, plunging them into near-darkness. Several seconds later, a heavy lock clicked on the other side of the door.

Lilah's stomach ached heavily from walking. Apparently the green bitch lived several miles outside of town, several miles for which they were forced to practically sprint after her.

For a pint-sized, tubby thing, she sure could hustle.

In the back half of the seven by nine foot barn Lilah could see a pile of hay, the rest of the floor was bare earth. Leaning back against the wood wall and clutching her side, the lawyer slumped down onto the dirt.

Fred hovered by the door.

For several moments all was silence - both of them fixing their eyes on the floor. Eventually, the Texan's voice broke the quiet in a shuddering sigh "Are you..does your stomach-"

"It's bleeding again." Lilah's eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, picking out new details on Fred's face as she slid down beside her, eyes still leaking quiet tears. The metal ring around the other woman's neck glinted in a stray ray of light.

Lilah's own blood moistened the palm of her hand as she pressed it to her stomach, the gash oozing slowly where the green bitch had touched it.

Texas cocked her head to get a better look as Lilah lifted her hand away, the physicist touching fingertips lightly to the wound's edges. Shivers of pain traced through the lawyer at the touch.

She stared past Fred, eyes fixing on the cracks and crevices in the barn where sunlight leaked through in streaks, illuminating patches of the dirt. Her eyes felt painfully dry, stinging in the afternoon heat.

It took several moments for her to notice that Fred was no longer studying her wound, and had crumpled into herself - thin frame shaking with sobs.

Lilah looked away in annoyance, but the sobs only got louder. Her eyes narrowed. "Oh stop sniveling!"

For a moment brown eyes looked at her in horrified silence, but lowered to the floor as the physicist's small chest began heaving even more uncontrollably. Lilah stared past her at the cracks in the wall.

The sobbing continued, scarcely muffled by Fred's hands. Lilah's fingers flexed, thinking of her speed-dial. Anything to shut her up.

"Oh just, fuck. Here" Lilah's arms wrapped around the Texan's small shoulders, pulling her into an abrupt embrace.

Fred didn't move towards her, but she did nothing to move away either. Lilah gathered the other woman's thin body up in her arms, and Fred's frame, racked with violent sobs, shook against her as Lilah eased the brunette's head down to rest on her chest. The other woman's breath and tears were hot on her skin, and she found her fingers stroking and petting down dark, tangled hair as Fred's wept into her chest, cries slowly fading into whimpers.

And all the while her side ached, dry eyes stinging in the afternoon heat.

* * *


End file.
